Colonial Xenophobia and Fear of “Foreign” Politics in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony: Implications for Analyzing Borderless Politics Today

Abstract

This chapter steps out of the broad context of this book, looking not to the twenty-first century but the nineteenth. It also does not consider historical forms of Pan-Africanism. Instead of addressing the contemporary moment directly, it offers a historical perspective on xenophobia. It considers xenophobia outside of the familiar context of nation and nationalism, focusing on a context of settler colonialism. This chapter provides a historical case study of discourses and mobilizations that specifically targeted modes of mobility and perceived political difference through the language of “foreignness.” It outlines ways in which nineteenth-century British settlers at the Cape of Good Hope manufactured political boundaries and how they designated political outsiders. In doing so, it addresses an earlier history of xenophobia in the African continent. It is based on archival research on settler constructions and politicizations of “foreignness” in the British Cape Colony in southern Africa, in the first half of the nineteenth century. The study analyzed colonial newspapers, letters, laws, and official documents to recover the local meanings of “the foreigner” and the explanations advanced for why foreign persons were seen as threatening. What emerges from the colonial archive is a settler politics inimical to “foreign” modes of politics. How these foreign politics were defined is of significant historical interest, but, importantly, suggests ways of thinking about other contexts, as well.